


echoes in my mind

by her_black_tights



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: AU, Angst, Cunnilingus, Dubious Consent, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I've turned into a human trash can for Rylo and I see no way to reverse it, Light Bondage, Mild Spoilers, Probably incest (even if it hasn't been confirmed yet), Stockholm Syndrome, Woman on Top
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 16:09:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5546735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/her_black_tights/pseuds/her_black_tights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's only after a few weeks of being held captive by the First Order that Rey realizes that she's not the only one who feels like a prisoner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. hold me down baby, i'm beside myself

**Author's Note:**

> this is kind of an alternate imagining of kylo/rey's relationship after he interrogates her for the first time. for some reason, the resistance has been unable to find her and kylo has not been able to extract the information from her that he needs but he knows she's important so they're kind of at a complete stalemate and stuck on the same base together, both of them unable to make any progress forward in the manner they would like, leading 2 angst and tension. basically, i'm just obsessed with these two and want to write about them being mad at each other while also being turned on until i'm sent 2 the fiery depths of hell for loving them so much.

Rey has lost hope that the Resistance will ever come to her aid. Too many days have gone by, too many failed interrogation attempts, and Kylo Ren seems to have given up, accepting her place in his world without fanfare or discontent. His leader has assured him that there is another way to find the piece of the map, a simpler, far less difficult way, but that it is necessary to keep her (always referred to as “the girl,” never by her name or any other defining characteristic, as if her gender amounts to all there is to know about her) around, in case her mind proves the secret to solving another problem. She has devised escape attempt after escape attempt but he has this sick way of figuring them out, thwarting her the second she is about to cross the threshold with a self-satisfied grin on his face but an empty look in his eyes.

They have settled into a sick form of normalcy, eating meals together, sleeping in adjacent quarters (hers, of course, are a prison cell, though, she has peeked into his and has seen that his are not much better, black walls with a black bed and black sheets, no real personality or warmth to speak of), and, somehow, spending their days together. He says it’s because her mind holds secrets, secrets that Supreme Leader Snoke has made it his duty to figure out, but, after the third week, Rey has begun to suspect that something else is at play, another secret that Kylo Ren is so convinced is cleverly disguised when it is really so obvious to everyone around him.

He’s lonely.

So, when he shows up at the door for another interrogation, Rey barely raises her head to greet him. He’s changed interrogation tactics, chaining her to a bed rather than the medieval contraption that she was chained to when she first arrived, and she does not quite know why but assumes it has something to do with his new plan: trying to win her favor, her allegiance, her power. He’s taken to not wearing his mask around her, as if that would further engender a sense of loyalty toward him. If anything, this makes her hate him even more. Laying in bed all day after years of constant activity, constant movement, is driving her insane and she has taken to drawing lines in the wall with her nails, marking the days she has been here, just like she did in that steel skeleton that she made her home on Jakku. 

“What are you doing?” Ren remarks stiffly as the door closes behind them. He yanks her hands, tightly cuffed together, away from the wall. She glares up at him, mouth petulant and pouty, before ripping her hands away from his grasp. “Making sure you and your Master Snoke don’t kill me with boredom. Is that your new plan?” she replies and a sharp hiss leaves his throat, her first warning that Ren is close to losing his temper. She doesn’t care. Even being beaten sounds more interesting than lying in bed like this for another day. She continues to stare at the wall, refusing to look him in the eye. She won’t allow him that victory. 

“Stop being so ungrateful. You’re still alive. Be thankful for that.”

“I’m only still alive because of your incompetence.” 

Another a sharp hiss leaves his throat and he grasps her shoulders tightly and turns her so she has to look him in the eyes. They’re dark, almost impenetrable due to rage, and his grip on her shoulders quickly goes from uncomfortable to painful. It seems she’s pinched a nerve. 

“Don’t speak to me like that!” he bellows and there seems to be a threat in his words yet she cannot detect its validity, its actual probability. He has had many opportunities to kill her over the past couple weeks, to the point where the possibility seemed so tangible, so real, that she almost felt both of them touching it, grasping onto that moment only to let it pass, just like all the other moments before it. She turns her eyes away from his, almost more as a courtesy than because she cannot look at him anymore. She knows that though he’s angry, he feels vulnerable here, with her, without the Storm Troopers and General Hux at his neck. His posture is loose and open, apart from his hands tightly gripping her shoulders, his eyes desperate, begging for understanding, pity, anything, other than the bitter apathy she has developed toward him. 

“Look at me,” he says and his voice suddenly grows soft and hesitant. He misses her gaze on his, light eyes meeting dark. She considers not obeying, considers turning toward him only to spit in his face or to laugh at his vulnerability, but it’s the soft pleading noise in his throat that wrapped its way around the word “me” that makes her choose otherwise, turning so she faces him and can give him what he wants.

“Why?” she asks and her voice trembles as she does so, weeks upon weeks of tension and anger collecting between them. She has told him she hates him so many times at this point that the words have lost their meaning and he has told her he’s going to hurt her, make her pay, just as often. He opens his mouth to answer but the promise of words hangs thick in the air, making her skin itch and her lip tremble. Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to. It was a sentiment she had to learn the hard way as a young scavenger, trying to make her own way in the dusty, dirt filled realm of depravity that was Jakku, but here she was proving that she was just as simple, just as unlearned as he has spent weeks telling her that she is. 

Lately, she has been having trouble where her thoughts begin and his end, their minds forming a messy haze whenever they are in the same room. At the beginning, he probed at it incessantly, trying to deduce meaning out of the ways their thoughts swam together but, once that proved to not produce the answers that Supreme Leader Snoke was searching for, he gave up, letting their thoughts intermingle and coexist to the point where she quickly loses track of who’s thinking what and who wants what and who hates who and sometimes she feels this softness underneath all the sharp peaks and treacherous valleys that fill his mind, a serene river that twists and tangles its way through the rage, the darkness, the fire. 

Sometimes she thinks the river is her.

But, those are the dark moments, the twisted moments, the ones where he’s been screaming at her and probing at her mind for what feels like days, both of them not sure of what he’s searching for. They had one of those moments yesterday, in the liminal space where night meets day, and he raised a fist to her, placed it on the skin of her cheek and told her that he was going to do it, he was really going to hit her, but when she laughed at him, her voice hoarse from crying and screaming, and begged him to do it. He couldn’t. His arms fell to his sides and he left the room, leaving her there, completely alone.

For some reason, she had started crying. She didn’t know where the tears had come from or who they were for but she couldn’t help it. She cried and cried until she fell asleep and she woke up aching. She did not know what the aching was from but, she’s figured it out now, as it intensifies, ebbs, flows, fills the room and wraps its way around their bodies. His upper lip twitches and his body quivers and she knows that he can feel it too.

“Why do I care what you think? Why do I want you to…. Why do I get angry when you say you hate me? You should hate me. I’ve been horrible to you and you deserve it, you fucking desert scum! You won’t let me in, you won’t tell me where to find Skywalker, and you…. You hate me!”

Each word leaves his mouth in a frenzied series of sounds and it happens so quickly that he does not seem to understand where they are coming from or where they will lead him. The confession leaves him panting and staring at her, his eyes hungry for something, anything, that provides him with direction or meaning. She tries to turn away and he growls, grabbing her chin and forcing her to look him and answer for her sins. 

He’s truly angry now but it’s an anger she has not seen before in his eyes and part of her cowers in fear but the rest of her vibrates with anticipation, with adrenaline, with anticipation. “Look at me. You have to look at me. You have to tell me what you’re doing to me, why I feel like this. Tell me!” His last sentence leaves his mouth in a roar and she feels pinpricks of fear traveling up her spine, but they are accompanied by something else, something darker, something more misunderstood, something she doesn’t think she has ever felt before.

“I don’t know,” she says and she intends it to sound stronger, more firm, but it leaves her mouth in a whimper.

“Say it again. I didn’t hear you!” he yells once more and messy haze of their thoughts swimming together becomes a violent current, spiraling and dancing around them without any meaning or sense. She wants to cry out, wants to scream, but does not have any voice left inside her, all of her energy consumed in the swirling of her thoughts. He moves his hands from her face to her neck, almost as though he wants to push the words out of her throat. 

His grip is close, not tight enough to do any real damage but tight enough to let her know that he can kill her, if he really wants to. His hands are large, one of them almost engulfing her entire neck and she can feel their strength, their dexterity, as they linger on her pulse point. It quickens, despite her bravado and her stubbornness, despite her refusal to ever let him see her weakness. He registers the quickening and his lips twitch up in a half smirk, half grimace and they teeter on the precipice of this moment, this decision, both of them soaking in what it means.

“Are you going to do it?”

Are you going to finally kill me?

Her voice leaves her throat in a hoarse whisper and Rey likes to think that her tone is daring but, deep down, she knows her voice is trembling, scared, girlish. 

“Yes.”

His voice is a stern murmur and his eyes are a lit with something akin to dark magic and before she can decide whether she’s going to fight, attempt to flee, or give in, he does it.

Kylo Ren kisses her.

His hands wrapped around Rey’s neck, firmly locking her head in place, he kisses her and she feels a dam breaking inside her, all the emotions whose names she has been pretending not to know finally breaking free, and she kisses him back, her arms pulling desperately at her restraints so she can grab him, touch him, anchor what’s happening in the physical realm. Their thoughts, the Force, whatever the fuck it is, it whirls around them at the speed of light and she can’t deal if that means that this is what it wants or this is what it hates.

Suddenly, she does not know what is happening. His lips leave hers and he looks at her like he’s hungry, needing, wanting, and it is a look that makes warmth spread throughout her body, collecting where she’s warm and wet. “Fuck,” he says under his breath, but it sounds more animalistic than that, and he begins kissing her again, his tongue meeting hers and his teeth tugging desperately at her lip. She moans, whimpers, whines, not for him to stop but for him to keep going, and he blankets her body with his own, pressing her down onto the bed that has become her prison. It doesn’t feel like a prison now, though. It feels like the gateway to something more, something bigger than themselves, something that’s part of the ocean that their thoughts create together, hanging vibrant and electric on the air now. 

She’s never been kissed before, not truly, and she has a feeling that he hasn’t either from the eagerness of his mouth but after a few sloppy moments, they seem to fall into sync, her body pressing up against his just as much as his presses up against hers. It’s only then that he realizes that she’s still restrained, unable to be an equal participant in their passionate embrace. She has been aware of this impediment for a while, her hands clutching the air needlessly, like they want to clutch him, any part of him, and he notices with a smirk, pulling away from her mouth for a moment. “Would you like me to take off your handcuffs?” He presses the words into the flesh of her neck, nipping lightly and kissing her there after each word. She whimpers desperately in response, her hips twitching up toward him. 

“I’m not going to.”

She should feel anger, should feel hatred, but instead, she feels herself becoming even wetter at the thought. She’s completely at his mercy. This thought should horrify her and it does, yet it also makes her even more desperate for his touch. He finds himself smirking at the way she moves her body against his, but it’s becoming even more and more obvious that he feels the same way, his hardness pressing desperately into her upper thigh. They stay there for a moment, glaring at each other, and the Force bounces between them, electric, desperate, and raw. 

“You’re my prisoner, Rey,” he whispers in her ear and the words send shivers down her spine. “Even though you… you torture me like this. You make me question everything I do… Make me think I’m wrong for treating you this way. It’s my turn. I will make you question. I will make you feel how I feel everyday… when I see you. I will make you feel wrong.” 

As soon as the words leave his mouth, his movements become more feral than man and he rips her clothes from her body, leaving her completely bare to his gaze. Rey’s heartbeat picks up and she tries to move, tries to exert some sort of control, put her arms are chained above her head and she’s completely vulnerable. His eyes move almost methodically over her body, as if he’s trying to memorize, calculate, absorb every inch of her skin. 

Kylo Ren brushes one of his fingers over a scar, a crescent between her breasts from a scuffle with another scavenger when she was young and inexperienced, and makes a sound deep in his throat and she can’t tell if it’s disgust or arousal, before he laves his tongue over it, tasting her past mistakes, her past pain. Rey gasps at his touch and her gasp quickly becomes a moan when he moves from her scar to her breasts. He alternates biting and sucking on her nipples and she cannot control the sounds that are leaving her mouth, can’t control how good what he’s doing to her feels. She feels him smirking against her breast and the thought makes her grimace but she can’t stop moaning, can’t stop squirming, can’t stop herself from getting wetter and wetter as he continues to torture her. 

She loses track of time, of movement, of what’s really, truly happening, so when she feels his hand moving between her legs and reaching where she’s already wet, wanting, and desperate, she’s shocked. That shock is soon replaced with absolute bliss as he begins to circle her clit with gentle movements, almost as though he’s trying to coax her into it, coax her into giving up her body to him. His tongue is still at her nipple and the pleasure that’s building up in her is too much, too overwhelming, and she lets out a moan that sounds more like a scream. 

Rey knows she must be drenching his fingers now, as he moves from her clit to slip two fingers inside her. It’s the first time she’s ever had anyone’s fingers inside her, apart from her own, and she winces at the intrusion. Ren notices and he lifts his head from her breast to place kisses at her neck and she realizes that, in his own way, he’s attempting to comfort her, attempting to make the pain go away. Her heartbeat quickens at the thought and she raises her hips to meet the movements of his fingers, pulling them deeper and deeper inside her. 

A groan leaves his lips and he looks at her, eyes aflame with lust and something darker, whose origin she can’t quite place nor does she want to place. “You’re so wet,” he murmurs and there’s a tone of wonder in his voice. She notices that he’s been rubbing his hard cock, still clothed like the rest of him, against the bed and the image both disgusts her and turns her on even more. 

_Have you ever done this before?_

His thought worms its way into her mind and she frowns at the intrusion. She hates when he does this, tapping into the common language they share, the bond that makes them seem so much closer, so much more similar, than they actually are (or, that she likes to think they are). She blushes bright pink and looks away from him. 

_No._

He makes a sound deep in his throat and she cannot tell if its approval or disapproval. He stops moving his fingers inside her and moves the hand that has been playing with her breasts to her chin, forcing her to look at him. She expects him to laugh at her, jeer at her inexperience, but instead he leans in and kisses her, gently this time. The eagerness with which she responds is surprising, almost as though this has been what she has been waiting for this whole time. His fingers pick up their pace again and she moans into his mouth. The pleasure she’s been feeling, it’s building up to a fever pitch and she needs him to continue, needs his fingers inside her. He moves his thumb to play with her clit again while his fingers thrust inside her and the sensation pulls her under, takes her whole, and she comes harder than she has in her whole life. Their kiss muffles her noises of pleasure and she breaks it only to take a deep breath, after feeling as though she hasn’t breathed for what feels like years.

Her orgasm sets something off in him. His eyes become alit with fervor and he moves quickly now, removing his clothing as quickly as he can. Rey stares at him with nervous anticipation, still coming down from her high. 

His body is more attractive than she expected it would be and she feels her body beginning to thrum with passion and hormones once more as she takes note of the planes of hard muscle, the litheness of his limb, and his hard cock, and she no longer feels embarrassed, no longer feels small and girlish. She is the one who has made him feel this way, even though she’s just desert scum in his eyes. Even though she is still restrained (a fact that steadily contributes to her arousal rather than inhibiting it), she feels empowered. She’s the one who’s made him hard and she’s going to be the one who makes him come. 

_I’m going to fuck you now._

She nods, eagerly, and it is only then that she notices that while his eyes are full of frenzy and fire, there’s something else there, something softer, whose name both of them know but do not wish to use. She spreads her legs for him and he moves to straddle her once more. Rey knows it sounds cliche but she almost feels electricity when their bare skin touches for the first time, and she knows he feels it too from the contented sigh he makes as his body settles on hers. “Kylo Ren….” she begins but he shakes his head. 

“Don’t call me that right now.”

“What should I call you then?”

He shakes his head and moves his hand between them to position his cock at her entrance. A sharp intake of breath feels her lungs and she opens her legs even more, preparing as best she can for the intrusion of his large cock. “Don’t call me anything,” he replies and she wants to tell him he sounds stupid, that everyone needs to be called something, but before she can do so, he enters her, slowly but he’s certainly not holding back all too much, and she lets out a sound that sounds more animal than human, her body struggling to make sense of their bodies becoming one. It hurts, it hurts more than she had always thought it would, but there is an edge of pleasure to the pain, an edge she wants to chase. 

He stills for a moment inside her and she realizes he’s letting her get used to him and his size before he continues. It’s a kindness she appreciates and, out of nowhere, she feels him peppering kisses along her brow, her cheeks, her shoulders, her neck. She opens her mouth to ask him what he’s doing but he silences her with another kiss, this one careful and slow, and her body trembles with the tenderness of it, the tenderness of him. “Rey,” he whispers into her neck and she knows that he’s asking her if he can move. She nods and looks him in the eye, searching for the meaning behind what they’re doing and only finds the eyes of a lost boy staring back at her. 

Kylo begins to move inside her and each movement brings her more pain but also brings her closer to pleasure. He moves one of his hands to rub her clit in time with his movements and it’s a movement she appreciates and thanks him with a soft moan. She feels her body becoming wetter and more receptive and he clearly feels it too as he picks up his pace.

“Rey,” he murmurs again but there’s a softness to it. He moves his free hand all over her body, trying to claim every part, and she whines, wishing she could touch him too. She settles for pressing a kiss to his shoulder and her sudden touch seems to shock him with its gentleness, so much so that he stills inside her once more. She wishes she could read his mind, know what is making him stop, but the feeling of pleasure overwhelms her perception of the Force. 

He begins moving again and his pace is brutal and unforgiving. His fingers are still working at her clit, moving even quicker to keep pace with his thrusts, and the edge between pain and pleasure has become so blurred that she does not care which she’s feeling. Rey finds herself wrapping her legs around his waist, pulling him even closer to her, and he lets out a small sound of approval, moving his head so it’s nestled between her neck and her shoulder. 

Though he intended to make her feel like his prisoner, he’s only succeeded in making her feel more like his home. Her body, once resistant, welcomes him now, and he chases every soft sound of pleasure she makes eagerly. Kylo Ren remembers the spot that caused her to make such sweet mewls when his fingers were inside her and finds it once more. She rewards him with a moan that almost sounds like a scream and her insides begin fluttering around him in the most filthy, most overwhelming way that he does not know how much longer he can last.

“Fuck, Rey… You feel…. You feel so fucking good,” he groans into the crook of her neck and she’s so overcome that she can’t even respond. Her hands pull helplessly at her restraints, if only to find something to cling to and he finds himself reaching his free hand to grasp one of hers, tethered slightly above her head in handcuffs. Despite herself, despite both of them, despite everything that has happened leading up until this point, she finds herself grasping his in return. 

Rey’s brain seems to have lost the ability to process what she is feeling and who is making her feel this way. In the haze of pleasure and pain, she forgets who she is, forgets who Kylo Ren is, forgets why they shouldn’t be doing this, and forgets where they are. All she can focus on is him and how both gentleness and ferocity is contained in his eyes and his movements. Suddenly, the same feeling from before hits her, except it is so much more intense, so much more real, and she screams out something that sounds like his name but she isn’t quite sure and her legs squeeze him even tighter, mimicking the movement of her cunt, and she feels electric, every part of her body singing and vibrating and union. She vaguely registers him saying her name, but he keeps saying it over and over again, almost like a prayer or an incantation and then she feels him twitch and fill her with his cum, reaching his end only moments after she does.

They lay there for a moment, not moving, only breathing. Rey’s eyes closed while she was coming and she’s too scared to open them now, too scared of the man she will find looking back at her.

“Rey.”

His voice brings her back to reality and her eyes flicker open to find him staring at her. He looks different somehow, softer. With a flick of his pointer finger, he frees her from her restraints and her hands fall clumsily to the bed. He grasps her other hand in his now too, but it’s clear it’s not to keep her from running away (his grip is too loose for that). It’s to keep her close.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” Kylo says, finally, and she frowns. She opens her mouth to say a snappy comeback, say that she feels the same way, but he stops her with a stern glare. “I’ve wanted to do that for so long. Since I first saw you. I’ve always wanted to-“

He trails off. “Fuck me,” she completes his sentence and returns his glare. She prefers him when he isn’t talking, when he’s all gentle touches and rough thrusts. She prefers him when he isn’t looking at her like she’s a fucking monster when he’s the real monster here, the masked creature who would be happy chasing and terrorizing her all over the galaxy if she ever managed to find a way to escape him. 

“No. That’s not what I meant. Don’t put words in my mouth.” 

He finally removes himself from inside her and sits up, beginning to put his clothes on. The moment has ended. She ruined it. Rey hates herself for ruining it but hates herself even more for caring, hates him for making her care. Her body feels cold without her captor wrapped around her and she wraps her blanket tightly around herself for warmth. 

Kylo does not make eye contact with her while he dresses. The sight of her seems to repel him and the thought makes her feel filthier than the thought of having sex with him. Only when he’s fully clothed does he turn to face her. She expects to find him angry, see him caustic, for him to start yelling at her and treat her like the desert scum that he thinks she is. But, instead, she sees the eyes of the lost boy once more, staring back at her hopelessly. It's only then that she notices that she's bleeding from where they were once intertwined and she blushes at the realization, moving her blanket so it covers where she's red and sore. Nothing hurts as much as his silence, anyway

“I’ll be back in the morning to put your handcuffs back on. Don’t try to escape with your newfound freedom. I will take that as a betrayal and I always kill people who betray me.”

He stares directly at her as he says it and his gaze makes her blood run cold. He means it. He means it more than any other time that he told her he would kill her because there’s something between them now, something larger than just being on opposite sides of the battlefield. They have seen each other at their most vulnerable.

He leaves her room without another word.

It’s only a few hours after he leaves, after struggling to fall asleep for what feels like days and sobbing on and off for what feels like longer, that she realizes that he’s accomplished what he set out to do after he kissed her for the first time. 

He’s made her wrong, just like him.


	2. make your way out of my head

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’ve done something to me. You’ve wormed your way into my mind. I thought it was the Force at first, the connection we share, but if it was just that… I could fight it. I’m stronger than you. But, I can’t. You’re haunting me. You’re with me everywhere I go. I took a mission halfway across the galaxy to get away from you but you were still in my fucking head!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...so i'm back. i originally wrote this chapter as the beginning of stand-alone one-shot but i realized that it was just too connected to this story and that i should make this fic a work in progress. i don't know how many chapters there will be but i'm on winter break, i have nothing to do, i really like this alternate universe, and i'm such trash for reylo, so i expect at least two more. thx for your support, bbs!!!!

She hasn’t seen him in a little over three weeks.

The morning after, a Storm Trooper replaced her handcuffs with a more medieval, more Force-Proof restraint device. After that, she knew not to expect him for a while. The first days weren’t too bad. Sure, she was bored out of her mind without his pathetic attempts at interrogation, but it gave her time to think, to contemplate what had happened between them. Her cunt’s soreness was a constant reminder of what they had done, along with the blood that stained her bed, but she was able to deal with that and come to terms with it in her own time. 

It was a mistake. In situations like these, she has decided that she’s allowed one or two mistakes, even ones as large as having sex with Kylo Ren. He’s the only human (other than Storm Troopers and that doesn’t really count as Finn is the only one who she’s ever seen without a mask and had a human conversation with and he isn’t even a Storm Trooper anymore) that she’s had contact with the whole time she’s been kept on base and, because of that. it is understandable why she has felt drawn to him, why she let herself fall into such a situation. It was only natural to seek intimacy from the only human she’s seen in weeks, she assured herself, and she thought that would be the end of it.

It wasn’t.

Hours blended into days, days blended into weeks, and Kylo Ren was still nowhere to be found. Anonymous Storm Troopers filled the duties he normally took on: walking her around the base so she does not lose her strength and become completely useless (if they ever find the right use for her), watching her eat her meals to make sure she isn’t starving herself as a rebellion tactic (it was an idea she had during her third week here and Kylo Ren quickly put a stop to it by threatening to force fed her, a loss of power that proud Rey could not tolerate), and guarding the bathing quarters while she uses them to ensure she doesn’t escape (probably because of at least thirteen different failed escape attempts during the first three days she was there). 

She never realized how he colored her days until he’s gone. Her heart aches at the thought, at least partly because of her own disgust at her feeling this way, but she can’t help it. During the last week they spent together, even before they had sex, she had felt this connection with him, a invisible tether that connected them in ways she even now doesn’t understand. 

Next to the collection of tallies she’s been making to count the days she’s been held captive, she’s been keeping a tally of the days that he’s been gone and she’s up to 23. She no longer feels the sore reminder of what they have done and she no longer has a clear memory of what it felt like when he kissed her for the first time, what his lips felt like against her skin. 

On the 24th day she gives up hope. He isn’t coming back. Why would he? He got what he wanted and now he no longer has use for her. The thought makes Rey grimace and she feels just like the used up women who used to spend their time hanging around scavenger camps in Jakku, picking up scraps of affection and attention like Rey picked up scrap metal and parts. Is she like them now? Is she just another used woman, cast to the side as soon as she begins to show her cracks, her flaws, who she really is?

She’s stopped sleeping, night seamlessly moving into day, and she wonders if this is what madness feels like, the constant doubting, the constant spiral of thoughts that turns around and around in her head. 

The door to her room slides open. It’s been so long that she doesn’t even look to see who it is anymore, knowing it’s another anonymous Storm Trooper here to carry out he’s rote duties. “Whose turn is it to babysit me today?” she calls out to the solider, knowing that she won’t get any answer.

“Who do you think?”

That voice. That tone. Those words shaped by a scowl. Her heart feels as though it’s about to beat its way out of her chest as she turns to face her captor. He isn’t wearing his mask and he isn’t wearing his gloves but it’s still him, Kylo Ren. His face is paler than the last time she saw him and its haggard, pained. She doesn’t know how her face looks when she first sees him but she feels her cheeks flush pink and, suddenly, she wishes she could just disappear, that her heart would stop beating this fast and this loudly, that she would stop wanting to be near him. 

But, she does want to be near him. And she does want to touch him but the infernal handcuffs keep her attached to her bed, arms planted firmly at her sides. All Rey can do is look at him, with the same petulant, same hopeful, same aggravated look she always gives him when he comes in at a moment where she least expects it. 

“I see you didn’t run off.”

“I value my life and ability to fight another day more than I value a second of freedom.”

Well, that isn’t completely the truth. Though her choice to stay was mostly pragmatic (she knew that she wouldn’t be able to get far, not with Kylo Ren aware that she had the ability to escape), there was a tinge of personal to it as well.

She wanted to see him again. 

Rey has told herself over and over again that it is merely to clear things up, to confirm what happened, to move on, to get past it. She doesn’t want another loose end, not after everything that has happened with the family that left her behind. She wants firm plans and closure, making sure closed doors stay closed and all of that. 

He frightens her. Frightening because she wants him, frightening because she knows something they shared that night amounted to more than lust and hormones (one of the other justifications she’s offered herself for what happened between them but looking at him now, she knows that’s not the case), frightening because she wonders if he really would have killed her if she had escaped, if he really would have hunted her down. The man, no, the boy who’s standing before her does not seem capable of doing such a thing but she’s always made that mistake with him, doubting how angry, how dark, how monstrous he can really be. 

No one’s as monstrous as those who don’t have a home to go back to. 

“I have something for you,” he states, simply, and he walks toward her bed. His stride is less sure, less commanding than it has been every other time he’s advanced toward her prison and they both notice. She curls up tight around herself, like she always did when she was a kid and was scared that someone was about to find her in the little hide-out she made for herself when she first realized that her family wasn’t going to be back for a very long time. It’s not a posture she takes because of fear but one she takes because of defense. She does not want to be caught off guard by him anymore.

Kylo Ren notices her body stiffening, notices the way she moves away from him, and something in his face shatters. She sees it only for a moment before his standard expression of anger and discontent replaces it. 

They’re both pretending to be things that they’re not. The old roles they used to wear so easily, evil captor and defiant prisoner, do not fit as well as they did twenty four days earlier. She feels the places where she’s outgrown her old identity and senses the places where he’s outgrown his and that knowledge makes her nervous and, at the same time, electric. It’s almost impossible to look at his hands without remembering how hard they made her come.

“Take off your shirt.”

Her heart starts pounding rapidly at his command. She looks up with him, eyes wide, and now he’s the one refusing to make her glance, too ashamed to accept what they’ve become. “No… Not because of…I’m not trying to have sex with you. I got you something while I was on a mission.” Rey raises her eyebrows, realizing that she’s being treated to special sight of seeing Kylo Ren flustered. Unlike her, he doesn’t blush, but she sees the cracks across his veneer of intimidation, the way his eyes dance across the room and the nervous way he’s flipping whatever he’s gotten for her over and over in his hands. 

“It’s a device that’ll make sure you don’t get pregnant. I was foolish before. I didn’t think to take precautions. If I got you pregnant three weeks ago, this will make sure you have a miscarriage in the next couple days. If you’re not, it’ll just insure that you won’t get pregnant in the foreseeable future. I have no interest in children and, even if I did, I wouldn’t want them to be half desert scum.”

His usual insult for her has lost some of its intensity, its power and they both notice. Her heartbeat quickens as she realizes how close they’ve come to that possibility. Rey hadn’t even thought about it and her hand immediately goes to her stomach. She hasn’t noticed that anything has been different but, no one was ever around to explain to her how that realm of of womanhood worked. She feels panic beginning to settle in and her eyes lock on her hands, unable to look anywhere else.

At this very moment, she might be pregnant with Kylo Ren’s child.

Suddenly, someone is sitting on her bed with her and even though he’s the only real person who it could be, she’s still shocked when his hands reach for hers and grasp them tightly. “This will fix it. I know being pregnant with my child is the most horrible fate you could possibly think of.” His voice turns cold at the end and she looks up at him, eyes fiery and angry. He always does this. He takes her concerns and turns them into tools that he uses to flagellate himself with. 

“Just shut up and give me the stupid device,” she mutters and she rips her hands from his so he can place the device in her hand. 

“Here. I’ll do it. It’s in a spot that’s hard for you to get to when you’re handcuffed like that but you need to take off your shirt. If you don’t take it off yourself, I will take it off for you.”

She glares at him but reaches to take off her top. It’s within the limited range of movement that she’s allowed with these handcuffs and she manages it without much difficulty. The difficulty comes when she realizes that the only thing protecting her from his eyes is the flimsy binding she wears across the breasts. She can tell that he’s attempting not to stare but he does anyway, his eyes drinking her in.

Rey clears her throat, glaring pointedly at him, and he quickly remembers what he’s supposed to be doing. His hands move quickly now and he situates the device right above her hipbone. “This is going to hurt,” he says, plainly, and then he pushes it into her skin, the surface of the chip remaining just outside and blinking. Rey, to her credit, doesn’t wince, doesn’t show any signs of pain. They sit there for a moment, together, in silence, absorbing what has just happened.

“I tried to forget you. I slept with other women. At least thirty of them… They were all prostitutes, brought from Coruscant. Nice ones too, the type that only rich politicians sleep with. I wanted to get the feeling…the taste of you off of me. But, I couldn’t get rid of you. I saw you, every time I closed my eyes, every time I tried to forget the way you looked, the way you said my name…” He trails off but it’s not because he’s caught up in an irreverent praise of her. Rather, he’s become angry and he clenches his fists, his breath coming out in short pants and various objects in the room begin to vibrate with the force of his rage, as if the very thought of her presence in his life is enough to drive him to blows.

She doesn’t know exactly why but when he says he’s slept with other people, she feels as though a pitcher of ice water has been poured over her. No wonder he’s been so cold with her, been away from her. Of course she wasn’t good enough. The remembrance of her inexperience probably disgusted him as he spent time with these other women. Kylo stares at her, marking her displeasure, her discomfort but he says nothing, his mouth in a firm line and eyes dark. 

“You’ve done something to me. You’ve wormed your way into my mind. I thought it was the Force at first, the connection we share, but if it was just that… I could fight it. I’m stronger than you. But, I can’t. You’re haunting me. You’re with me everywhere I go. I took a mission halfway across the galaxy to get away from you but you were still in my fucking head!”

He rises up the bed abruptly and begins pacing back and forth in her cell. He’s the angriest she’s ever seen him and she can’t take her eyes off the display. 

She’s made him this upset, this distraught. Small Rey, the little desert girl, has driven Kylo Ren to this point. She can’t help but take some pride in that. 

However, whatever pleasure she’s derived out of his pain is short lived. After a few moments of him fuming to himself, he turns on her, eyes ablaze. 

“You will tell me what your feelings are toward me. You have to. I will not allow you to make me weak, desert scum. Ever since that night, your mind has been even more impenetrable to me. My…weakness for you, it makes me unable to use the Force to harm you.” He says the word “weakness” with such disgust, her skin crawls and rage begins to build beneath her skin just like it’s been building underneath his. 

“You have no right to treat me like this. I haven’t tried to do anything! I have just as much reason to be angry as you do! You’re the one who kissed me and who….. ” She cannot help but feel embarrassed and flustered as she mentally recounts what happened between them. Her words seem to make him even angrier and he turns on her, grasping her shoulders and she feels fear and arousal coursing through her veins, immediately taken back to that night, which began with him grasping her shoulders in this way. 

His eyes are different now. Rey doesn’t know how exactly, but there’s a newness to them, a rawness that she does not quite understand. He returns her stare without flinching but she can tell both of them are thinking about that night, that stupid fucking night, and how it started just like this. Her eyes move to his lips and she notices how… pretty they are, how beautiful his face can be, even when it’s contorted with rage. Somehow comes over her and she finds herself moving her hand so her thumb makes contact with his lower lip. His whole body starts at her touch but, she doesn’t move her hand away, moving to trace the bones that make up the structure of his face.

“Rey…”

His mouth wraps its way around her name like it did 24 days ago. It brings her out of the trance she’s fallen into and she drops her hand, looking at it as though it’s an inhuman, alien part of her. 

Their rage has dissipated and the room falls quiet. He releases her shoulders and turns around, unable to face her. He’s doing it again, making her feel as though she’s ruined everything. The thought makes her chest constrict and her heart beat faster and faster as she comes to a disturbing realization.

She’s scared of him leaving her alone again.

It looks like he’s going to. His back is turned to her and she can’t feel what he’s thinking. “Kylo,” she begins and her voice wavers with uncertainty. Is this really what she wants? Does she really want to reveal this much to him? Does she really have any other choice? His absence taught her something: he’s the only barrier she has between her and insanity, keeping her real, in this hell he’s created for her. It’s a sorry irony but it’s hers all the same and it’s one she can’t let go of now. 

“Please don’t leave again.”

She knows it’s not the heartfelt confession that he was hoping but it’s the best she can do. She wasn’t raised in a loving home where one was taught how to speak about their feelings. Though Kylo does not always express the right emotions, the proper ones, she cannot deny the fact that he has at least learned how to express something other than determination, hostility, and mistrust (the best she has ever been able to string together for anyone who does not know her well). This is all she can do.

He doesn’t turn around immediately. No, her words hang in the air, making her feel broken, tense, wrong, and she immediately thinks that this all has been a mistake. She worries at a broken nail, not knowing what else to do. This is just her plight, to be left and and to be misunderstood. She should have learned her lesson her first time around, she tells herself, and the thought makes the beginning of tears come to her eyes. 

She has always had a hard time crying, never truly understood the point of it. Tears had no place in a desert wasteland like Jakku. Water was too precious there. Rey does not even fully understand why she feels like she’s going to cry now. It isn’t completely because of Kylo Ren but she cannot ignore what has happened between them, cannot pretend that that isn’t part of the problem. Everyone always leaves her in the end. First her family, then the Resistance, and now him. 

It’s only after a tear slides down her cheek that she realizes he isn’t leaving her. 

The moment he sees what has happened, he rushes to her side and it’s an action neither of them completely understand. It’s clear that he’s as perplexed as she is. His hands hang clumsily at his sides and he just stares at her, almost as though he’s trying to deconstruct what emotion of this caliber could possibly mean. She doesn’t take his lack of comfort as an insult; she does not know if she could handle it if he actually touched her. 

“We will have dinner together tonight.”

His words come out clumsier than he probably intended and she looks up at him with questioning eyes. She, thankfully, has stopped actively crying and part of her wants to laugh in disbelief. His face is the picture of determination but she can’t figure out what exactly he’s trying to do. “Why?” she mutters and she sees the vein in his forehead start to twitch, signifying she’s asked the wrong fucking question and if she hadn’t just been crying, he may have flew into another one of his rages. 

“Because I want to. That’s a good enough reason for you, prisoner. Or have you forgotten what you are? I don’t want to spend more time in this horrible cell. It’s below me. I will come later tonight, under the guise of taking you for a walk. We will retire to my quarters and I will tell you what I expect of you. We will have conversation. You will not run away from me and I will not run away from you. And, through doing so, I will figure out how you’re making me weak so I can overcome it and become stronger. I’m sick of this weakness and, clearly, avoiding you has just made it worse.”

He makes an attempt at his usual commanding tone, but his words are too forced, too hurried. He does not make eye contact until he finishes speaking and when he finally looks up at her, his eyes make it clear that he’s serious. She does not know whether she should be comforted or horrified by this development, so she settles for uneasy.

Without another word, he leaves. No goodbye kiss, no handshake, the door shuts behind without much fanfare, leaving Rey alone and in complete disbelief. Dinner? Conversation? Apart from his power hungry delusions, dinner and conversation tend to mean one thing. 

Did Kylo Ren just ask her on a date?


	3. lead me down the path marked red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’re two abandoned children, struggling to figure out what it means to love.

_You need to kill her._

The thought reverberates in his skull, making it impossible to think about anything else. It’s the only thing Kylo Ren has been able to think about, ever since that night 24 days ago. Supreme Leader Snoke hadn’t mentioned anything about her the few times he had met with him but he has given Kylo a knowing look every time they see each other. “Remember how we Sith treat weaknesses,” Supreme Leader told him at the end of their last meeting and the look in his eye sent shivers down Kylo’s spine.

_He means Rey. He wants me to get rid of Rey._

He paces back and forth in the new living quarters Snoke has given him. They were supposed to be a reward for successfully completing his mission a week or so ago but Kylo knows that that is not their only purpose. Snoke had to have sensed how much time his protege had been spending in Rey’s prison cell, conveniently located right next to his room. The new living quarters were a command: distance himself from the stupid desert rat and focus on his real objective: defeating the Resistance and becoming the most powerful Sith in the galaxy.

Killing her would be easy; it’s a fact that he’s reminded himself of time and time again. She’s his prisoner, weaponless and defenseless, and completely at his mercy. Given her sensitivity to the Force, using Force Choke is probably not the best choice. However, he has a lightsaber and she does not and therefore, taking off her head in a clean swipe would probably be his preferred method of attack. He would probably do it in her cell, have some Storm Troopers clean up the mess, and be done with it. 

Every single time he walks into her cell, he runs through that scenario, puts his mind through the motions. _It would be so easy._ He always tells himself that as he stares at her, chained to her bed, her eyes practically daring him to do it with their hardness and their hatred. Once, he actually managed to place his hand on his lightsaber as he walked into her room but, when he saw her, he realized she was sleeping. He told himself he didn’t want to kill her in this way because it was a coward’s move, not fit for the future ruler of the Sith.

It was only later that he was able to admit it to himself the real reason is how lovely, how defenseless she looks when she’s asleep.

The thought makes a hiss escape his throat and he finds himself pacing with more speed now, egged on by his anger at his own weakness. She’s ruining him. He cannot pinpoint when exactly it happened but he knows it’s gone too far now, that he is in uncharted waters and cannot see a way out. 

At first, he thought it was because she was the first person he had ever slept with. It wasn’t a detail he had shared with her before they had sex; he didn’t want to let her now that he too was scared and inexperienced. He attempted to change that through sleeping with all of those courtesans but, at a certain point, they all blended together, a sea of painted faces and practiced words, and he always closed his eyes when he was inside of them and pretended he was inside Rey instead.

Besides, to boil it down to just sex would be to ignore the fact that this feeling had been building up inside him since the first time he had seen her. Something about her harsh eyes, her soft mouth, the way she never took any of his bullshit and how she was the first person to push him out of their mind…It had intrigued him, to say the least.

Kylo has tried to obliterate most memories he has from his former life. Supreme Leader Snoke said it was necessary to move on, that Sith don’t have pasts, don’t have families. However, some hang still hung on, persistent and stubborn, the aspects of being Ben Solo that he can’t seem to shake.

His family life, though more loving and warm that most, was riddled with chaos, mostly due to the tumultuous relationship between his parents. While they loved each other, both of them treated their relationship more like a sparring match than an exchange of thoughts, values, feelings. He remembers, or Ben remembers, that whenever his parents got into a fight (and they got into many, no topic that they could discuss or encounter not rife with controversy), his father would often leave without saying a word, taking Chewie and a bag with him, and he wouldn’t return for at least a few days. Leia would endure each of these departures with the same stubborn determination she applied to everything; she refused to show that her husband’s inability to stay put affected her and would go about her duties as a diplomat and a peacekeeper, her son Ben in tow. Whenever Ben would ask where his father was, she would scoff and say something along the lines of “who needs him, anyway?” and then return to whatever she was doing. 

Han would always return and Leia would always forgive him and Ben would always be treated to the horrifying sound of his parents making up for at least four nights afterward. Though he always knew that his parents loved each other, Ben Solo was never quite sure what that love meant and only saw the consequences of it: his mother crying when she thought he couldn’t hear and Han had been gone for a month instead of his typical few days, the hard line of his father’s mouth whenever his mother insisted on taking on a diplomatic mission that would put her into grave danger, and their constant arguments over their how to raise him because they loved him so much.

To love, to care for someone, is weakness. Ben had seen that firsthand and Kylo has learned from those memories.

When he’s around Rey, it’s so hard to keep Ben and Kylo separate. Ben’s dead, he tells himself over and over again. He died the night he stormed the Jedi Academy and disrupted the fledgling Jedi Order. But, when Rey looks at him with those eyes, so warm and yet so cold, he cannot help but be reminded of the way his mother looked at his father whenever he disappointed her. The worlds of Kylo and Ben become one and it’s enough to make him want to scream, want to destroy the places where she’s wormed her way into his heart, and never look back.

But, he just can’t.

So, when he begins this night by telling himself he’s going to kill her, Kylo Ren already knows it’s a lie, but it’s a comforting one all the same.

It keeps him from realizing how bad things have gotten. He doesn’t just have a weakness for Rey. He’s falling in love with her.

* * * * *

Rey doesn’t quite know whether he’s late or if he’s on time. He didn’t really specify what time he was going to come get her apart from “tonight.” The time her captors usually bring her dinner has come and gone and she’s left sitting in her room, pondering what exactly is going on with her and, beyond that, what’s going on with her and Kylo Ren.

When she first woke up in this prison cell, she had a very clear idea of what she was and what he was. She was a scavenger from Jakku, just trying to do the right thing and get back to the Resistance. He was a monster, a masked villain who haunted her every movement and who wanted to see her suffer. This was just the way of the world, she told herself over and over again. People who believe in good are always in constant conflict with those who are evil and that’s the end of it. 

However, her world of black and white has been infiltrated by shades of grey. With every passing day that she spent in Kylo’s captivity, she became more and more aware of the ways in which he too was captive, how he had such limited freedom and limited peace of mind.

“He probably isn’t coming” she tells herself, plainly, as she stares at the ceiling of her cell. 

She’s ashamed for talking to herself but she doesn’t know any other way to make herself actually believe these things and give up on her stupid fucking daydreams and misguided affections. 

When he finally does arrive, she’s almost lost hope. It’s late, far past the time she’s supposed to eat, and she’s impossibly hungry. Angry has replaced shame and she’s sitting up in bed, her gaze fixed on the door and it’s piercing, all of her hurt feelings concentrated in one glance. When he enters her line of vision, wearing his helmet and full regalia, she jumps, her cheeks immediately flushing when she realizes that he has seen how angry she is. Any hope she had for protecting her dignity by pretending she hasn’t been waiting for him patiently ever since he left is gone.

“You’re angry,” he says, simply, and he moves to her bed so he can begin removing her handcuffs from the place where they attach to the wall. She blushes even more at his statement but holds her wrists out for him. Rather than using the Force, he presses a quick sequence of numbers into the device, probably to keep from arousing suspicion. 

When she’s free, Rey hops down from her bed, her legs crying out at the sudden physical excursion after a whole day of laying in bed. She takes a moment to move her legs around, doing a series of stretches, and she thinks she hears him chuckling at her from inside his mask. She fucking hates it when he wears that thing. It makes him even smugger than he is usually.

“No, I’m not.” Even if he had seen her glaring, she wants to keep her dignity in tact for as long as she can. 

He presses a gloved hand to the back of her neck and begins to direct her out of the cell. She knows that this is protocol, that he has always done this when he takes her anywhere, to make sure she doesn’t get too far, but it doesn’t stop shivers from running down her spine at the sudden contact. “I had to wait until it was late to not arouse suspicion. General Hux has been breathing down my neck more than usual, ever since I started spending all my time in the prison holding area.”

Spending all his time interrogating her.

His acknowledgement of the time they’ve spent together certainly shuts her up. “I told the Storm Troopers I would be delivering your dinner and have it in my quarters. It isn’t too far from here. Just act… normal. Like a prisoner would.”

She raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything. After his display earlier that day, she knows not to be surprised that he no longer resides in the room next to hers anymore. He seems to be repulsed by everything being around her entails. 

They enter the hall of the base and are immediately greeted by a Storm Trooper doing his rounds. Kylo Ren nods at him and presses Rey forward. He then begins to direct her down a series of halls that she has never been done before. Though she’s been a resident of this base for almost four months, she has only seen a small portion of it. The halls he’s directing her down are less sterile, less foreboding than the prison wing, but not by much. In fact, the whole base seems to resemble a prison. She cannot help but wonder if he likes living here, if he doesn’t hunger for something more comfortable, more of a reflection of human life. 

When they finally reach his quarters, he goes ahead of her to punch another code into the wall. The door opens and he pushes both of them inside, quickly, as if he’s been nervous this whole time and this is the first time he’s able to show it.

His quarters are not impressive but they are far better than the ones he had before and far, far better than her prison cell. He has a sitting area and two doors, one that she assumes leads to a private bathroom and the other to his bedroom. The architecture follows the rest of the base and the only visible personal touch she can see is that it is decorated only in dark colors: black, grey, dark blue, and dark red. 

“I’m going to take off your handcuffs. Don’t think of doing anything rash. The door is impenetrable if you do not know the code or have my fingerprint.”

She rolls her eyes at his words but presents her wrists all the same. He goes through the same process that he went through when he unattached her from the wall and her handcuffs drop to the ground. Rey rotates her wrists a couple times, enjoying the feeling of freedom, despite how temporary it will be.

“Can you take off your mask? It gives me the creeps,” she says before tentatively taking a few steps into the sitting area of his quarters. Walking freely is strange after spending so many weeks attached to a wall. She savors the moment, bouncing on the balls of her feet a couple times. 

“I was going to take it off anyway,” he says, always the contrarian. He removes it without much fanfare, placing it on table near the door of his quarters. He removes his gloves and cloak as well, leaving him in his all-black ensemble. Rey cannot help but sneak a peak at his body, well-hidden under all those black layers but there are still hints of his musculature and litheness. Her gaze lingers too long and he catches her, meeting her eyes. To his credit, he doesn’t say anything. He merely awkwardly smooths out his shirt before walking toward an area that a sink and a cooling unit to procure their dinners. It’s the same gruel that they always eat and she’s surprised that Kylo, Knight of Ren, does not receive anything better. He hands her her bowl and a spoon before pressing her body in the direction of a chair.

“Sit there.”

Rey bristles at his command and intentionally sits at a perfectly fine chair next to the one he pushed her toward. She sees that vein on his forehead twitching, the precursor to a fit of rage, but he miraculously holds it together and sits in the chair opposite her. 

This isn’t the first time they’ve eaten together. When she first arrived and decided to go on a hunger strike, he was in charge of making sure she ate, sitting threateningly in the corner while she had a staring contest with a bowl full of mixed protein substitutes She eventually realized weakening herself physically wasn’t the best idea and began eating again, but before that, they spent at least a week together like that, in a clumsy, perverse form of companionship.

They work on their meals in silence, not looking at each other.

The silence becomes sticky and unbearable when they both place their bowls on the floor. She remembers how impassioned he was before, how angry she made him. She remembers how soft the skin of his lips were and how nice they felt against the rough skin of her thumb. But, most of all, she remembers that he said, during their time apart, he slept with at least 30 different women and the thought makes her burn with anger.

“How were they?”

Her tone is crude and biting and meant to hurt. Kylo looks surprised, not expecting anger from her without his own provocation. “How were who?” he replies, raising an eyebrow. He’s more relaxed than she’s even seen him now, his long legs stretched out in front of him and his arms crossed in front of his chest in a loose hold. He’s so much bigger than her. It’s easy to forget when they’re in her tiny cell of a room where both of them don’t seem to fit but, now, with him stretched out like that, she cannot ignore it and the way it makes heat rise to her cheeks and descend to her cunt. 

“The prostitutes. All 30 of them. Who you slept with while you were gone.”

Her tone is short and clipped and she settles into her chair, sitting cross-legged with one arm perched on her knee. She lets her chin fall into the cradle of her head and stares at him, her eyes cold and unfeeling. She hadn’t really thought about it until she came to his quarters, the quarters that he probably slept with them in, and she wonders if she’s sitting in the same chair that one of them sat in. The very thought makes her feel so small, so inferior, that she balls herself up even more until she feels as though she’s taking up as little space as possible. She always made herself small when she felt upset on Jakku, mimicking a mother’s embrace with her own arms.

He changes his stance too, leaning on his knees with his elbows so he can better look her in the eye. His face is impenetrable and she casts the Force out, as untrained as she is, to read his thoughts but he blocks it swiftly. “They were satisfactory,” he replies, stiffly, and she finds herself becoming even more riled up at how fucking nonchalant he is. She can handle Kylo when he’s a raging, power obsessed mess but she doesn’t know how to deal with him when he’s like this, so calm and collected. 

“Satisfactory?” she repeats, mockingly, and she curls up even tighter, as if that will protect from any feelings of inadequacy she may be experiencing.

“Do you want me to describe each of them in detail? What their techniques were, how many times they made me come or in which ways they made me come? Do you want me to describe how large their breasts were or any other aspects of their physical appearance? Do you want me to demonstrate what positions I did with them? Or, do you want me to show you all the places in this room where I had sex with them?”

He’s playing with her now, his full lips stretching into a smirk. Every word he says is a punch to the gut and she know that he’s just getting even with her for the ways in which she’s mocked him, belittled him, made him small during most of their other interactions. 

“In fact, it was more like 35, if I remember correctly…”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, the last one was a real piece of work. She could put her legs all the way behind her head and, let me tell you, you’ve never really experienced anything until-“

She silences him by standing up and walking toward the door. 

“Where are you going, Rey? I told you there was no way for you to escape!”

He rises to his feet and meets her at the door in just two long strides to her six small ones and she has never hated how tall he is more than she hates it right now. She crosses her arms across her chest and looks at the floor. “I’m not trying to escape. I want to go back to my cell. The guards are probably wondering where I am, anyway.”

“Why do you want to go back to your cell? You don’t have to wear your handcuffs here! You aren’t chained to a bed! I let you sit in a different chair than the one I wanted you sit in. Would you honestly rather be chained to a bed?”

“Yes, I would rather be chained to a bed with nothing to do and no one to talk to than listen to you describe all the women you slept with while I was wondering where you were!”

Her words leave her mouth with more emotional power than she planned out and she immediately hates herself for it, her cheeks turning bright red. His eyes widen as he looks down at her and he reaches down to tilt her chin up so he can look at her properly. Rey, always the rebel, attempts to turn her chin away but he tightens his grip and forces her to look him in the eye. 

“Wondering were I was?” He repeats her phrasing but punctuates each word, staring at her intensely.

“…You didn’t come back in the morning when you said you would,” she murmurs and she cuts his eyes away from his when she says it. She’s already admitted she didn’t want him to leave again before in her cell but this feels even worse, even more humiliating. 

“You wanted me to come back?”

His tone is so uncertain and so wavering that it shocks her, makes her meet his gaze again so she can understand what’s going on. There’s emotion in his eyes that she can’t quite place and she struggles to decode it, not letting her stare leave his for a second.

“I told you before that I didn’t want you to leave again.”

“You didn’t say why.”

His words make her frown and turn away. So much for being brave and facing him. Nothing in her life has prepared her for this moment and she does not think that anything could have. 

“You didn’t explain what you meant when you said you couldn’t forget me. Was it that you couldn’t forget how…terrible it was, having sex with me, lowly desert scum, your stupid little prisoner?” She hisses out the last few words and the intensity of her own anger surprises even her. She pushes his hand away from her cheek and takes a step away from him, not wanting to him to be able to use his strength against her anymore. 

“Rey.”

His tone is stern and she winces from its coldness. 

“Do you not see what you’ve done to me,” he asks and he shakes his head, almost in disbelief. “I can’t sleep. I’m barely able to eat. I’m plagued by you. I wish it was as simple as the explanation you’ve come up with. But, it isn’t.”

“Did you like them more than me?”

“Who? The prostitutes?”

“Yes, the prostitutes.”

“…Don’t make me do this.”

“Don’t make you do what?”

“Don’t make me admit what we both already know.”

“And what’s that?”

“I pretended every single one of them was you.”

His confession stops her cold in her tracks and her heartbeat picks up as her mind struggles to process what his words mean as they’re so contrary to his actions. Rey takes a step closer to him, no longer afraid, no longer repulsed, and takes stock of Kylo Ren, the man who has always seemed so enigmatic, so mercurial, so difficult. He shifts underneath her gaze, clearly uncomfortable, and refuses to meet her eyes.

“You pretended you were having sex with me?” Her question sounds so innocent and the gentle tilt of her voice brings something like light to his eyes. He finds himself shaking his head, not at her question but at the absurdity of all this. He had asked her to come to his quarters so he could overcome this, figure out what twisted trick she had been playing on him to make him feel this way, only to find that she’s not to blame, that she’s just as lost as he is, that this is all his fault. 

“I tried to find ones that looked like you.” He’s already so far down the rabbit hole that he isn’t even trying to save himself anymore. He doesn’t want to. Something about being in her orbit, being close to her power, is more invigorating than being close to the Force or Supreme Leader Snoke has ever been. Their eyes have locked onto each other now and he almost hates himself for not giving in earlier, for spending twenty four days away from her because this is so much better than hating her, avoiding her, spending his days dreaming up ways to kill her. 

When she looks at him like that, he feels whole.

Without thinking, he finds himself placing his hands on her waist and bringing her close to him. She looks startled at first but when she’s in his arms, she relaxes considerably. She’s spent so many days working over what’s happened between them in her head that she cannot even think about it anymore. She knows it’s wrong, knows it’s a terrible idea, but there’s something about her and Kylo that she just can’t put her finger on, that feels bigger and larger than the roles they have been given to play.

“Did any of them really look like me?”

“No. They were all too clean and polished. They didn’t have that dirty desert scavenger quality that I was really searching for.” She raises an eyebrow because she thinks that she’s witness to Kylo Ren telling a joke or at least trying to and his attempt is simultaneously clumsy and charming. 

They stand there for a moment, like predators sizing each other up, trying to decide how much harm the other could possibly inflict. His grasp on her waist tightens and her hands climb their way up his back to circle around his neck. 

Kylo Ren has never been much for risk management. He twists the thought of the worst thing that could possibly happen around in his head for a few moments but it doesn’t interest him, not really. He presses his body up against hers, already hard from the very idea of fucking her again, and she feels it, her eyes widening and cheeks flushing.

He doesn’t know how it happens or who initiates it but they’re kissing again and he feels something swell up inside him, something so large but so delicate, as his lips meet hers. It does not take long for him to become ravenous, for him to press her body against the wall of his quarters so he can better feel her against him. Rey, surprisingly, does not fight against him moving her, probably because his choices benefit her from as much as they benefit him, and her hands move quickly and distractedly up and down his chest, his shoulders, his neck, his face, trying to make up for all the skin she couldn’t touch the first time they came together like this.

Rey feels electric, her body moving without any real concern for sense, for propriety, for logic. _You are my enemy,_ she wants to tell Kylo but the words have no meaning to her anymore: good, evil, hero, villain, enemy, friend, whatever has happened between them has ruined all real distinctions for her, left her adrift in a meaningless, uncertain cosmos. 

He breaks away from her for a moment, his lips tinged pink from kissing her, and he smiles. It’s the first time she’s ever seen a genuine smile on his lips, not a smirk or a sneer, and it makes her heart quicken. She feels a thrumming inside her head and she assumes that’s the Force he keeps talking about and she can’t tell if its in approval or dread. “You feel it too,” he mutters and there’s such hope in this voice, such wonder. She nods, both knowing and not knowing what he’s talking about. He has this habit in talking in cryptic turns of phrase that seem to belong to a language that has long since been forgotten.

He grabs hold of her with such intensity, such closeness, that it breaks her heart. He doesn’t know how to touch people without hurting them. She feels his anxiety, his uncertainty, so much more than the first time they touched and they stand there for a moment, holding onto each other for what feels like for dear life. She can count the amount of hugs she’s experienced on one hand and clumsily encircles his neck with her arms in a vague imitation of what she’s seen in the holofilms she stole from more wealthy travelers when she was younger.

They’re two abandoned children, struggling to figure out what it means to love.. 

When he grabs her hand and begins to lead her to the bedroom, she does not resist or turn away with fear. For one of the first times in her life, Rey follows without question.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u all so much for your continued support!!! i think there going to be three more chapters of this fic, the last two more closely lining up with the events of the movie. also, the next chapter will definitely contain them actually banging again. i keep trying 2 write them banging but just get so caught up in the ANGST and the EMOTIONS and then i get so overwhelmed bc i'm so down reylo garbage chute that i cannot escape.


	4. i need you more than ever now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even now, he knows there's only one way for their story to end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my god, guys!!!! i'm so sorry this chapter took so long. i was on vacation for the past two weeks visiting my boyfriend so i just haven't had time to update until now. here it is, 3000ish words of straight smut and angst. i kind of switched povs randomly bc sometimes it's easier to write rey and sometimes it's easier to write kylo. thank you so much for the continued support!!! i appreciate all your comments and your kudos so much! when i started writing this, i literally had no idea that anyone would like this i'm gonna try to get out the next chapter within the week.

Her heart is beating in her ears with the very knowledge and weight of her actions. Her hand is in his put he isn’t dragging her to his bedroom. No, she’s a willing participant, her body moving in time with his as they walk across his quarters. He’s quiet now, controlled, but she sees the ghost of the smile he gave her playing across his lips. 

_You feel it too._

His words keep playing in her head over and over again, the wonder with which he said them warmly filling her mind.They are the words of someone who is so lost, so used to being misunderstood, that the very idea of someone understanding them fills them with such wonder and such vibrance that they do not know how to express it. 

The door to his bedroom slides open automatically and suddenly everything feels so much more real when they were standing together in his living room. Suddenly, abruptly, they’re kissing again and their hands are all over each other. They half stumble, half walk their way to his bed and he seems more confident now, more sure of himself. Rey wishes she felt the same. The knowledge that he has some sort of feeling or fondness toward her is driving her insane with its meaning, its intention, its source. 

_The people you care for always leave you._

The words seem to be written on the inside of her skull because she cannot escape them. Her body stiffens in his grasp and her arms fall to her sides. They’re laying on his bed now and Kylo pulls away from her, eyes soft and hurt. 

“Rey,” he whispers and her heart melts at the way he says her name with such hope, such fragility, such fear. She knows asking if she’s okay feels too tender for him, too familiar, so when she feels him pressing his way into her mind, searching for answers, she lets him. 

“You’re scared,” he says matter-of-factly but his fingers card their way through her hair as he says it, the touch of his fingers on her scalp sending shivers down her spine. She nods and his face is unreadable, almost carved out of stone as he takes stock of her and her answer. He moves his hand from his hair to cup her cheek.

“Why?”

His eyes are dark and fixed on hers in a way that makes it clear that there is no way to escape answering this question. She blushes and his gaze softens because of it, his thumb gently caressing her cheek. “I’m afraid you’re going to leave again,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper. 

Something breaks in him, perhaps the last thing that was firmly keeping him of the realm of Kylo Ren, ruthless, heartless, Snoke’s true successor, murderer and monster. 

“Rey, I will do everything in my power to make sure I never leave you again.”

It’s the scariest series of words that he’s ever spoken. His heart is beating as quickly as it possibly can and he’s so overcome with emotions whose names he told himself he had forgotten, that he no longer had any use for. He presses a kiss to her lips and it’s so chaste, so pure, that he doesn’t understand a man as terrible and fearsome as he is known to be is capable of such gentleness. 

“If you leave, I will never forgive you.”

Her stare is determined and strong. She means it. Rey is done being left behind, done being forgotten, done being ignored. No matter how twisted this…thing between her and Kylo is, she will not be passive anymore. She will not let herself be left behind. He winces underneath the intensity of her stare.

“I know.”

They start kissing again but it has so much more meaning now, so much more weight. She relaxes into his arms once again and he wraps himself tightly around her body, making her feel so safe and warm. She tries to memorize his body with her hands, mapping different planes of musculature and bone. Without thinking, Rey slips her hands underneath his shirt. He gasps into her mouth at her sudden touch and she smiles because of it. 

They’re both so unfamiliar with human touch, lost children who have been left on their own for far too long. She finds herself mesmerized by the act of tracing all of his different scars, the different hills and valleys that decorate the map of his skin.

She pulls off his shirt first, eager to see more, and hers soon follows. There’s a slowness and tenderness to their actions now and he looks so young as he admires her body, hands moving to caress her breasts. Rey whines and presses herself eagerly into his hands, making Kylo smirk and brush his thumbs over her nipples until they pebble hard against the calloused skin of his fingers.

She’s so beautiful to him when he sees the places where she’s rough and broken. He’s dreamt about the scar between her breasts more than he’s dreamt about her breasts themselves and he moves one of his hands to brush against it. Kylo teases her for a bit longer, until she’s whining and pressing herself up eagerly against his hands and then he begins to move his hands south, slipping a hand underneath the waistband of her loose pants. 

“I want to do something different this time,” he says and he’s trying to sound smooth and in control but his cheeks flush and betray his inexperience. While sleeping with those courtesans did not help Kylo forget Rey, he did learn a few new ways to pleasure a woman and he’s eager to try them out on the woman he actually cares about. 

She raises an eyebrow and places her elbows behind her body and rises up on them so she can better meet his eye. Her skin’s flushed and her breathing’s rapid from the way he was teasing her nipples before. She has a hard time stringing together a series of coherent thoughts when he’s looking at her like that and has his hand so dangerously close to where she’s wet and desperate for his touch. “You’ll like it. I promise it,” he adds, lamely, his inexperience showing and he feels his ears growing red underneath his hair. 

He pulls her pants and underclothes off in one swift movement, leaving her completely bare to his eyes. Kylo does not hide his lust for her as his eyes move across her bare skin hungrily. Rey finds herself both embarrassed and aroused by the way he looks at her, his intensity and his desire. 

He places a kiss on her inner thigh and the sensation makes her jump and giggle at the ticklishness of it. “Stay still, Rey,” he mutters but there’s a layer of arousal underneath his annoyance as he places a hand on her stomach to steady her. He kisses his way up her left thigh and it is only then that she realizes what he’s about to do. He’s going to use his mouth the same way he used his fingers on her the first time they slept together. The thought makes her even wetter and he notices as he parts the lips of her labia. He groans at the sight, unable to help himself. 

When his tongue makes contact with her clit for the first time, Rey sees stars. It feels so good, softer than his fingers and more deliberate. Kylo begins to lap at her, encouraged by the sounds she’s making and the wetness that is starting to drench the bedsheets beneath her. “Kylo…. Kylo….. Please don’t stop,” she moans and her words send a sharp pang of arousal to his already hard cock. He isn’t exactly practiced and confident in his movements but he manages to develop a rhythm.

He slips a finger inside her so her cunt doesn’t clench in vain and the very action brings her to the very edge of the most exquisite pleasure without pushing her off of it. He moves from her clit to to trace lazy circles over her labia for a few moments before pressing his lips to her clit in an obscene kiss. She quakes beneath him, the room filled with her moans and her steady chanting of his name. Her cunt flutters threateningly, making it clear that he can’t stop now, not when she’s so close. Kylo adds another finger and nibbles on her clit as he sucks on it, wanting to make her feel as good as humanly possibly to repent for the ways in which he’s hurt her, betrayed her, made her cry.

Her orgasm hits her like what she imagines a wave must feel like and she screams louder than she ever has before as it makes its way through her. He steadies her with his hand, keeping the jerking of her hips from disrupting her rhythm, and she rides out her pleasure for what seems like forever. 

When she finally comes down from her high, she opens her eyes to see Kylo smirking stupidly at her, wiping his wet mouth with the back of his hand. “I take it you enjoyed that,” he says, coolly, but it’s clear that he’s very proud of himself. She rolls her eyes before collapsing into the mattress, her body humming pleasantly and boneless. He makes his way up her body to press his lips to hers again and she lets out a surprised, small gasp at the taste of her on his lips, so musky and sweet.

Once she regains full use of her limbs again after a couple of clumsy moments, she moves to undo his belt and then his pants, hungry to make him feel the same way that he just made her feel. His breath hitches in his throat when she finally undos his garments enough to free his cock and she brushes her fingers over it, gentle and curious. 

The first time they had sex, she hadn’t been allowed to touch him but now in his room, she does not feel like a prisoner. She wraps his cock in her small hand and squeezes experimentally, unsure and clumsy in her movements. It doesn’t matter to him; her soft explorations of his body have brought him more pleasure than any of techniques utilized by the experienced courtesans from Coruscant. She closes her fist around him and begins to jerk him off. “Fuck, Rey,” he mutters and kisses her, their tongues meeting and lazily dancing around each other. 

It doesn’t take long before the movements of her hand become too much, sweet but nowhere near as good as he knows being inside her will be so much better. 

He places his hand on hers, making her stop and she looks up at him, thinking that she’s done something wrong. He chases away her worry with a chaste kiss to her forehead and moves so his body’s hovering above hers, making her feel so small but so safe. “Do you want my cock inside you now,” he asks and she flushes but nods, her eyes eager and heavy-lidded with lust. 

“Say it.”

She blushes and looks away from him but does it all the same. “I want your cock inside me.”

The sound of her repeating his words back to her makes him fucking _growl._ He braces himself above her on his elbows before moving his hand to guide his cock inside of her. She whines as his cock enters her. The sensation of him stretching her again burns but still feels so good in a way that she doesn’t even understand. It’s clear that he’s taking his time, inching his way into her, and he presses kiss after kiss to her forehead, her neck, her collarbones. 

When he’s all the way inside her, he begins to move, slowly and deliberately. His elbows frame her head, keeping their faces close together and his eyes fixed on hers. They set a slow but steady rhythm with each other, her hips rising up to meet his, both of them less nervous and more aware than they had been the first time. 

Their minds swim together, joined like their bodies are. She feels tendrils of his pleasure traveling down her spine, the control he’s utilizing to keep him from just fucking her as fast and deep as he possibly can. It’s so different from the Kylo knew her first couple months here, so rash, reckless, and thoughtless in his actions.

He’s consumed by how fucking warm and tight she is, how her body welcomes him in and makes itself his home. He leans down to kiss her and she eagerly meets him, her mouth pressing soft little moans against his lips. He can’t help but become insatiable, want even more, and from the way her hips keep snapping up against his, that she feels the same way. Their movements become even more frenzied and after what feels like years of anticipation, he bottoms out, reaching her end, and she keens louder than she ever has before, her body squirming up against his weight, desperate for more. His eyes widen and he has to pause because she’s just so fucking perfect, so fucking sexy, so fucking lovely, and he just has to take it all in. 

“Don’t stop,” she whines and she grinds up against him, desperate for more, and he cannot help but smile and press a kiss to her lips before fucking her deep again, giving her exactly what she wants. It’s hard not to when she’s looking at them with those eyes, pupils almost as large as her irises are and fuck drunk. 

She wants more. She needs more. Something about that feeling of being so full, so complete and the knowledge that it’s him, the lost boy who can’t seem to leave her alone makes it even better. Before she knows what she’s doing or how she knows how to do it, she turns the tables on him, guiding his body so she’s on top and he’s on his back now, resting against his pillows. He looks one part shocked, one part angry, and one part absolutely ravenous, and she kept help but smirk before beginning to grind her hips against his. 

It’s not something she’s done before and her first few strokes are clumsy and haphazard but he soon places his hands on her hips and helps her set a pace, fast and hard. On every downstroke, she grinds her clit on his pubic bone and the sight of her taking her own pleasure drives him mad, makes him want even more, and he fucks up against every single time she comes down, wanting to make everything feel as amazing, as perfect as he possibly can. He deserves that and more and even while he’s letting her fuck him into oblivion, he has a feeling that he’ll never be able to provide her for the picturesque, fairytale world he knows that a girl like Rey deserves. 

The least he can do is to make her come, he decides, and he sets himself to that task, his left hand moving to rub circles against her clit while she rides him. The effect is instantaneous and she lets out a sound that he doesn’t even know if it sounds remotely human or not and he doesn’t even care. Without thought or remediation, he finds himself flipping them over again, with her on her back, and he’s fucking her as hard as he possibly can and her eyes are rolling back in her head and he thinks she’s saying his name but he’s not quite sure and he doesn’t even care, especially when Ren starts to sound like Ben and he wonders if she would still fuck him if she knew the truth, knew what he really was and the things he did to leave Ben Solo behind.

The absolute ecstasy, openness, and warmth in her eyes when she comes makes him think she could. 

He follows her shortly after, the way her cunt tightens, twitches, and convulses around him too much for him to bear. Her name feels like a holy incantation on his lips, something that’s only meant to be said when one reaches salvation, but it’s the only thing he can say, the only thing he can think, the only thing he can feel.

For a moment, Rey forgets who she is, forgets where she is, forgets who he is and why all of this is so wrong. When she comes to, it’s to the feeling of him kissing her neck and she cannot help but giggle at how ticklish it feels. “Good, you’re still alive,” he drawls and she pushes at his chest, rolling her eyes. 

“Stop looking so bloody smug,” she scolds him but she doesn’t have the energy to really give him a hard time. He rolls off of her and lays down next to her, still catching his breath. They just lay there for a moment, struggling to understand and process what has just happened. He doesn’t know what to do with her hands now that they aren’t on her body anymore so he clasps them together.

This is uncharted territory. He didn’t linger too long last time but there’s nowhere else for him to go and she doesn’t seem ready to leave either. 

“Are you going to take me back to my cell now?”

There’s such tenderness, such fear in her voice and he turns and realizes that while he’s been laying there in post-coital bliss, she’s been fearful, afraid that he was going to kick her out, treat her like the prisoner he really is. He feels something like anger building up inside him, not at her, but because of the situation, and he turns to her, grabbing her by the shoulders and bringing her close. Her body stiffens then relaxes in his grasp, almost as though she isn’t expecting it, doesn’t believe that this is really happening. 

“No. You’ll sleep here. With me. I’ll take you back in the morning.”

She doesn’t know quite what this mean and the feeling is both exhilarating and horrifying. He pulls the covers over both of their naked bodies and he seems hesitant to initiate any further full body contact so he grabs her hand. It’s a small gesture but it warms her heart all the same, makes her feel something unlike anything she ever felt on Jakku, a feeling she doesn’t quite know the name of but that she can feel the edges of, brushing against her fingertips. 

“Goodnight,” he mutters and his voice is so soft, so hopeful, but so broken and she squeezes his fingers tightly, not knowing what else to do. Everything has changed but, at the same time, nothing has, and they both feel the weight of their actions pressing down on their chests. 

“I meant what I said before.”

The words leave her mouth before she can stop them and his grip on her hand loosens as he turns to face her. 

“What?”

“If you leave or betray me, I’ll never forgive you. As long as I live. I’ll never forgive you.”

When she says it now, a sinking feeling fills his chest because he knows without a doubt that she means it. 

And, even now, he knows there’s only one way for their story to end.


	5. where did i go wrong with us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Kylo Ren, you are about to face your greatest challenge yet.”
> 
> “I’m ready, Master.”
> 
> Snoke smirks, his large, spectral body stretching out in front of his apprentice with such confidence, such ease. “I can tell. I feel such hatred in you know, such pain. It’s intoxicating. You finally understand your place in the world, Kylo Ren. You are not to be loved. You are to be hated.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this chapter took so long!! i started school again last week which has kind of slowed down my progress but i'm so happy to finally have this chapter up for y'all!!! your continued support and patience means so much to me. :-) i'll probably have the next chapter up within the next week, at the latest in the next week and a half.

They’re both doing their best attempt to fool themselves and neither of them is particularly good at it.

For three blissful weeks, he convinces himself that there is nothing out of the ordinary going on, nothing truly disturbing. He ignores the way his heart softens whenever he looks at her and how whenever he isn’t in her orbit, he still finds his thoughts fixed so absolutely upon her. Kylo Ren attempts to go through the normal sequences and paths of his day: training with the Knights of Ren, discussing strategy with Hux and his cronies, and the occasional sojourns to Snoke’s inner sanctum, each becoming more and more difficult than the next. 

Kylo fits Rey in when and where he can, his lust overcoming his common sense more than once. She has spent most nights in his room and he’s getting tired of using the Force to wipe the minds of all the Storm Troopers who have been assigned to guard her cell. 

Neither of them have asked the other what exactly they’re doing. It’s a question that hangs heavy on the air whenever they’re together. He sees it in her eyes sometimes but he always chases it away with a series of kisses and hushed words. He knows he isn’t fooling her but she at least appreciates the attempt.

They’re laying together in his bed, Rey still asleep and her head resting on his chest. She had a night terror earlier, one where she woke up screaming and pleading for her family not to leave her, and he can tell from the way she falls asleep shortly after jerking herself awake that it’s something that happens often. She doesn’t ask for his comfort, seems to be horrified by the prospect of it, but when she falls back asleep, Kylo strokes her hair for a few minutes in the hope that his actions will make her dreams less traumatizing. 

He always wakes up before her. He savors the moments before she wakes; they’re probably his favorite part of her sleeping in his bed. She looks so soft and lovely when she sleeps and it’s the only time where he’s able to forget what’s really going on with her, the twisted web they have weaved with their actions, and savor the fact that they’re together and the beauty that can be held in that fact. 

Rey wakes up, slowly joining the world of the living. She does not start anymore when she realizes her head is resting on his chest and she blinks up at him sleepily. “Morning,” she grumbles, before nestling herself crook of his arm. His heart quickens at her continued participation in their unvrtysin form of physical intimacy but she doesn’t seem to notice, still held captive by the innocent fog of sleep. 

He knows she doesn’t notice because their interactions are starting to feel normal. Routine, even. Sometimes he invents an elaborate charade in his head, where they are two normal people (perhaps low-level military personnel for a planet at peace) and they live in his quarters on their peaceful, ordinary base, and they both have their jobs that are boring but pleasant. He has almost told her about this little story that he’s invented at least twenty times but whenever the words appear on his tongue, his heart clenches up and his throat closes because he knows that to admit this fantasy is to admit that on some level, his life isn’t what he wants, that there’s something more to life than the way of the Sith, and that something more involves being wit her. 

It’s a feeling he had sensed before he met Rey, this pull to the light. He had pushed it down, buried it underneath the corpses of every innocent he has killed, but when he’s around Rey, the feeling multiplies, to the point where he sometimes doesn’t respond when she calls him “Kylo,” because he feels like he’s Ben again. She always laughs at him and asks if he’s forgotten his own name and his blood runs cold, twisting away from her touch and her warmth without thinking.

“Did you sleep well?” 

“Not particularly.”

He frowns and brushes his fingers over the shadows that have developed beneath her eyes. “You never sleep well,” he offers and his answer is her body stiffening in his arms. 

“It’s hard to sleep well when you’re a prisoner sleeping in the same bed as your captor.”

The mood changes abruptly and she sits up, twisting her body away from his grasp. He feels the loss immediately and wants to grab her and pull her back but the hardness and coldness in her eyes makes it clear that to do so would be a terrible, horrible mistake. “We’ve talked about this before, Rey. There’s nothing I can do.”

While he intended his words to soothe her, they seem to have done the exact opposite. She roughly pulls the covers of his bed to cover her nakedness, her mouth in a hard line. “I think you’re lying. I think you like keeping me captive here, stuck with you. I think you like keeping me trapped.”

She always knows the worst fucking thing she could possibly say and she always says it with gusto, her eyes wild and her tongue poisonous. When in her presence, he’s been trying to control his temper, not wanting to scare her anymore, but when she says things like that, painting their situation in the worst possible light, something roars up inside him so much more powerful than the anger born of the day to day aggravations of the First Order’s incompetence.

“Don’t say that.” His tone is sharp, clipped, an attempt to keep a lid on the rage bubbling up inside him. She takes his attempted control as a signal to dig her claws in even harder, to make it hurt, and he feels the harshness of her words before she even says them.

“I’ll say whatever I want, Kylo. You can’t keep pretending that this is business as usual! You can’t keep pretending that I’m just another prisoner!”

He knows she’s right and that’s what makes it hurt so bad. He glares at her with all the intensity that he can muster and she meets him on equal footing and part of him wants so badly to acquiesce to her, to set her free and follow her wherever she goes, even if that leads him to the Resistance, his mother, and his father. But, he can’t. His refusal to free her is the last thing keeping him Kylo Ren, keeping him the hope of the Sith and the First Order. 

“Tell me if that’s how you feel. Please. If that’s the way you feel, I need to know because I don’t want to spend my time with someone who thinks so little of me. I would rather rot in my cell,” she spits at him and she wraps the entirety of his covers around herself and gets off the bed and begins to gather her things in anticipation of his words. He knows that if she leaves now, that’s the end of this, of everything. 

And the very thought of that is more than he can take.

He reaches out for her without thinking, large hands easily engulfing her small shoulders, and bringing her close. She half fights, half relaxes into his grasp. “You know that’s not how I feel,” is all he can manage in the way of reassurance and his lame attempt causes her grimace, her face twisted with anger. 

“You’re such a coward! That’s all you ever tell me, that I should know how you feel, that I should just be able to sense it, but that’s just the way you get around telling me how you actually feel. I’m sick of it, Kylo. If you don’t tell me how you feel about me right this moment, I’m not going to play your little game anymore. I’ll leave.”

Her eyes flash dangerously and he knows she means it, knows that this is it, his moment to prove himself. He looks at her, hopelessly, begging her for another chance, a different path, anything easier than this. “Rey…” he begins but saying her name in a broken, hopeless tone isn’t enough for her anymore. He knows the words he needs to say, knows the order they fall in, and he knows it will fix everything, but he just cannot say them. They’re stuck in his throat. He smooths his fingers over her shoulders, soothingly, in the hope that she’ll understand his body’s movements and how they communicate how she really feels. He looks up and sees tears in her eyes and he’s never hated himself more than he hates himself now, unable to string together three words that he heard so often growing up from his mother, his uncle, his father. He cannot possibly claim to be a person who does not understand what love is because it surrounded him so completely growing up. 

And that’s why he’s so scared. Because he knows what love will do to him, what it will make him do. He knows that once he says those words, that’s the end of life as he knows it. Part of the reason he’s avoided love all this time, is he knows deep in his bones that he’s the type of person who loves too deeply, too fiercely to every do anything halfway. If he tells her he loves her, he knows his next step is giving up everything: the First Order, his Sith training, everything, and he can’t do that, not when he’s come so far. 

After a few more moments past, she takes his silence as an answer. The tears that have been welling up in her eyes begin to cascade down her face and he sees sobs building up in her throat but she turns away before one escapes her mouth. Silently, she rips herself away from his grasp and gets off the bed. Her hands are shaking but she still gets dressed, each garment taking her at least twice as long to put on. 

Kylo Ren sits there, staring at his hands, hands that have killed so many people, ruined so many lives, and all he can think is that this is the worst thing he’s ever fucking done. She finishes getting ready and she turns to face him, her eyes still red but she’s wiped all of her tears away and her expression is hard, impenetrable, strong. “Get dressed and take me back to my cell. After that, I never want to see you again.”

Numbly, silently, he does exactly what she says. It’s only after chaining her to the wall, locking the door to her cell, and finally getting back to his quarters that he’s able to say the words, muttered hopelessly to the floor as he sits in one of the chairs in his sitting room: “I love you, Rey.”

By the time he says them, she’s already out of her cell and halfway across the base, on the way to her escape.

* * * * * *

Snoke calls him to his chambers six hours after Rey left his room. Kylo does his best to make himself impenetrable, to hide the effect Rey has had on him. He hasn’t cried but he knows that’s just because he’s so numb now. She was the only thing keeping him stable, keeping him secure in his humanity, and now that she’s gone, he sees very little point in it.

His master wears a feline-like grin when his apprentice appears in his chambers. Kylo is wearing his full regalia, unable to face Snoke with his face uncovered. He knows that his master has sensed what happened, though, knows that he’s no longer entangled with that little scavenger girl. Smoke does not say anything that confirms or denies this but Kylo can feel approval radiating off of his master and its approval that he readily accepts.

“Kylo Ren, you are about to face your greatest challenge yet.”

“I’m ready, Master.”

Snoke smirks, his large, spectral body stretching out in front of his apprentice with such confidence, such ease. “I can tell. I feel such hatred in you know, such pain. It’s intoxicating. You finally understand your place in the world, Kylo Ren. You are not to be loved. You are to be hated.”

Snoke’s words stoke something in Kylo, something whose name is dark, twisted, and perverse. He grasps hold of it, uses it to fill the place in his heart that Rey used to live in his heart. He feels a thrumming inside his body and he knows it’s the Dark Side, swallowing him up. He wonders if this was how his grandfather felt after his grandmother betrayed him, refusing to see the genius of his vision and the thought quells the hurt inside him. 

“Your father is coming. The Resistance has learned of our location, of the Starkiller, and that we still have the girl. I trust that you will make the right decision when the time comes.”

Snoke fades out, leaving Kylo alone in the darkness of his chambers. His mouth set in a hard line, he places his hand on his lightsaber, knowing what he must do for the first time in his life.

It is only then that he receives the notification over his communicator that Rey has escaped and can’t be found.

* * * * * *

Escaping her cell is easier that Rey had ever thought it would be. She’s watched Kylo wipe the memories of her guards so many times that she almost intuitively knows how to do it herself, waiting until one of the guards comes in to check on her and give her her protein porridge. Controlling their minds is a bit different than erasing their memories but once she fixes her mind on the task. After a few tries, the Storm Trooper has dropped his gun to the floor, unchained her from the wall and undone her restraints and left the door open, and she’s on her way, running as fast as she can through the halls.

The ease with which she escapes is encouraging but puzzling. Rey finds herself smiling ear to ear as she makes her way through hallways she has only walked through when handcuffed but ecstatic happiness soon turns to discomfort when she realizes that part of her always knew that it would be this easy, that there was a always a way for her to escape right under her nose. 

She has stayed this long because of him. 

Rey told herself she wasn’t going to cry anymore. Escaping ensured that, ensured that she would have a task to focus on that would keep her heart from feeling as though it was falling apart. It works sometimes, when she’s actively hiding from Storm Troopers or plotting her next move, but every moment that she’s idle, she remembers how silent he was, how all he could manage was clumsily saying her name, that she put everything on the line only to get nothing in return. 

She’s known she’s loved him for a while. She doesn’t know the exact moment that it happened but once she became aware of the feeling, it was inescapable. She struggled to hide it under her discontent, her hatred for her status as a prisoner, but he kept rescuing her from the darkness of her cell every night, kept showing her new aspects of himself that were both surprising and expected. 

She tells herself she loves because she was left behind, ignored, for so much of her life. In his twisted way, he’s the first person who’s made her feel wanted, and it is hard to pass that up when one has spent their whole life feeling left behind. That’s how she’s rationalized her feelings for him up until this point. However, now that she’s been met with the reality of their situation, she truly realizes how wrong her rationalization of her feelings truly are. 

She loves him because of the twisted kinship they share, two sides of the same, fucked up coin. 

Winding her way around another complicated corridor of the base, she tries to push those thoughts out of her head. She needs to find an escape, needs to make her way back to Finn, to the Resistance, back to some form of normalcy. 

It’s only then that she runs into someone. Her heart quickens and she feels a scream building in her throat and she knows that this is the end, that they’ll kill her for this, that he’ll kill her for this, but when she opens her eyes, expecting to see Kylo Ren staring back at her, she sees Finn and Han Solo and Chewie and a sob bubbles up in her throat as she throws her arms around Finn and he embraces her so tightly, the musculature of his body providing a clumsy form of sanctuary, and she thinks he’s crying too, feeling the weight of the many months they’ve been apart.

“I thought I was never going to see you again,” they both say and it’s almost in one breath as they look at each other with such wonder, such happiness. He squeezes her tightly and she squeezes him back, so happy to have her first friend back, and it’s only after they’ve been beaming at each other for what feels like years that Han Solo coughs roughly, drawing their attention to the task at hand. 

“You guys can have your sweet little reunion later. We have a Starkiller to take down.”


End file.
